Hundreds of Israeli settlers stormed the courtyards of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Wednesday, under the protection of the Israeli occupation police.
Jerusalem Governorate reported that 559 settlers entered the compound in successive groups through the Maghariba Gate, carrying out provocative tours and performing Talmudic rituals within its grounds.
Since Itamar Ben-Gvir assumed office at the end of 2022, he has carried out repeated incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque as part of a deliberate policy aimed at entrenching a temporal and spatial division of the holy site in a blatant violation of the long-standing legal and historical status quo at the Noble Sanctuary, recognised by international covenants as an exclusively Muslim place of worship.
These recurrent incursions constitute a flagrant breach of freedom of worship and a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which obliges an occupying power to respect religious sites in occupied territory. They form part of a broader policy of religious discrimination imposed by the occupation authorities against the Palestinian people in Jerusalem.
The persistence of these assaults on Al-Aqsa portends a dangerous escalation, accompanied by a systematic strategy to restrict Palestinian presence in the holy city and to enforce a settlement reality aimed at erasing Jerusalem’s Arab and Islamic identity and transforming it into a city fully subjected to Israeli control.
Amid the continued absence of any firm international stance, the occupation’s violations in Jerusalem proceed unchecked, reflecting the failure of the international system to uphold the principles of justice and accountability enshrined in international humanitarian law, which is a failure that effectively encourages further Judaization policies and the erasure of the city’s religious and historical identity.
